The Free Internet Cafe for the Blind & Visually Impaired, the first in the whole of Africa, which opens the World Wide Web, making The Gambia a leading light in Africa, with this technology by allowing free and total access to surf the net send and receive emails and for students to enhace their studies with the aid of this pioneering software. No more do they need to rely on a third party to read to them newspapers, magazines, books, letters and world wide information. Nonvision.KingfisherGambia.com - News Reader (novice)
 

News Reader

Level: novice

PURPOSE

The easy way to keep up with the very latest news of your choice from a variety of respected sources.

ASSUMPTIONS

Running Thunder screenreader software from www.screenreader.net or any other screenreader software and the Accessible RSS Reader program from www.webbie.org.uk/accessiblerss

What follows works well for those not able to see the writing on screen. If you need magnification, go to www.itzooms.com

WHAT YOU HEAR

You can listen to the very latest news which is updated literally every few minutes and you can skip what does not interest you. The Accessible RSS Reader encourages you to get information far beyond the political and below are details of how to get the best from the program.

About RSS: RSS is an easy way to get information from websites that change often, such as news sites and weblogs. A website can provide a short listing, called an RSS feed, that contains its latest headlines, the story, and a link to the website story in full. This is a convenient way to keep up with new content or news. The Accessible RSS Reader has made all this easy to enjoy.

You have to be connected to the Internet to use RSS.

Windows XP Users: From the Start Menu, go to All Programs and then press letter A until you hear "Accessible" and then press the RIGHT CURSOR key. CURSOR DOWN until you hear "RSS" and press ENTER.

Windows Vista Users: From the Start Menu, type "RSS" and press ENTER.

Starting Accessible RSS presents you with a list of stories from BBC News. You can move up and down the list to read each story title with the UP and DOWN CURSOR KEYS and pressing ENTER to hear the story you want

To get to the "Feeds list" menu item, press ALT + L. you will find several other news sites: Independent, Guardian etc. CURSOR DOWN to select another website and press ENTER on your choice.

When you get on to a story you want to listen to, you may find it helpful to press CONTROL + DOWN CURSOR to skip the early links and get right into the words of the story.

If you want to remove a story from the list after you have read it just press the DELETE KEY while it is selected. If you want to see all the stories, including deleted ones, select "Deleted stories" from the View Menu. (ALT + V then CURSOR DOWN and press ENTER when you hear "Deleted Stories").

Also in the View Menu, you can choose to view your stories as text. When you finish reading such text, close the text window with ALT F4 and you are back where you were. News items in Text Format can be saved and edited and transcribed into Braille if you have appropriate software and a Braille printer.

Because RSS feeds change often, check for new stories by selecting the Refresh menu item from the Website feed menu (CONTROL + R).

You can get to the RSS feeds of some websites by pressing CONTROL + E then CURSOR DOWN amongst the topics. And pressing ENTER to hear your choice. www.bbc.co.uk is a great example and so is www.number10.gov.uk

 

The Free Internet Cafe for the Blind & Visually Impaired, the first in the whole of Africa, which opens the World Wide Web, making The Gambia a leading light in Africa, with this technology by allowing free and total access to surf the net send and receive emails and for students to enhace their studies with the aid of this pioneering software. No more do they need to rely on a third party to read to them newspapers, magazines, books, letters and world wide information.